Zip 100 & Falcon

[thedavegray]

Hi,
Do I need to terminate a Zip100 drive if it's plugged into a Falcon. There are no other
SCSI devices attache to the Falcon.

Also, if I wish to format a disk so that it can be used on a Zip100 connected to a PC
which format should I use? I can boot up in MagiC 5 or standard TOS, prefer the former though.

Regards
Dave

[uweseimet]

Hi,

yes, the devices at the physical ends of the SCSI chain must always be terminated, regardless of the device type.

In order to exchange data with a PC you do not have to format the drive or cartridge. Simply partition it TOS/Windows compatible with a single, non-byteswapped partition (Windows does not support more than one partition on removable media) as described in the HDDRIVER manual. This partition can then be used with plain TOS or Windows without any additional software.
When running MiNT or MagiC a purely Windows-compatible medium will also work.
Note that the Atari cannot boot from PC-compatible drives/media if the drive is used with the Atari's IDE port, because the Atari's IDE port unfortunately uses a non-standard byte-order. But since you are using a SCSI ZIP and not an IDE ZIP this does not affect you.

Best regards

Uwe

[thedavegray]

Hi Uwe,

Thanks for the info. Ok I setup the Zip100 with the TT as you suggested and now HDDriver can see the device
ok. I can now also easily format the 100mb disk for use under TOS just fine. Problem is I can seem to setup the
disk so that it can be seen by Windows.

I initialized the partition to use TOS & Windows Combined with no byte swapping, to which the program
informed me this must be a single partition, which is what you said, then it tells me that this is only valid for
MagiC and MiNT - I don't have either of these on this TT.

I've uploaded a couple of screenshots to Picasa to show what my settings were.
https://picasaweb.google.com/1100279967 ... directlink


Dave

[thedavegray]

Ah, got a bit further. When I partition the drive if I set it to a single partition of 30mb I can
initialize it. I can install the HDDRIVER.SYS and can see it when I open up a window.

When I put the device into a Windows PC (Vista) all I can see is a blank drive. I can copy files onto it,
however these file can't be seen on the TT.

In short, files copied from the TT can't be seen by Windows and visa versa.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Dave

[uweseimet]

Hi,

with single partition I meant to create 1 partition of 100 MB by explicitly entering the data for one partition. This is different from treating the whole medium like a floppy disk drive, which is what you get when entering no partition data at all. This results in a special format (only interesting for some versions of Windows or DOS).
You can simply say "Split", then enter "1" to obtain one partition. Select "TOS&Windows Combined" in the compatibility settings. Selecting "Optimized" is often a good idea even if one does not have an NCR/Symbios Logic controller, so just select it.
All this information refers to HDDRIVER 8.4, by the way, which features some improvements regarding TOS/WIndows-compatible partitioning compared with previous versions and was in particular tested with removable media and Windows XP, Vista and 7. Older versions provide the same options, but the resulting partition layout is slightly different.

Cheers

Uwe

[thedavegray]

Hi Uwe,

Yep that all seems to be ok now. I did eventually install MagiC on this machine and partitioned the Zip to 100mb
and now both the Atari and the PC can share a drive. I just rebooted into normal TOS and after installing the HDDRIVER.SYS
file it appears that it (TOS) can also read the drive.

Thanks again for your help.

Dave